Friday, September 29, 2017

As I was writing the post on Turkey and dual nationality, a conversation I had here in Japan flashed through my mind but I decided to leave it for later. The core issue is: Can you get your French national back if you renounce it? The person (French) I was talking to believed that it was easy to reclaim French nationality, and therefore, no worries for a French about becoming Japanese. The day she wants to leave Japan she simply applies to be "reintegrated." Easy peasy.

Now far be it from me to argue with a French citizen about this. But I have lived in France for a long time and in my experience French citizens don't always follows changes to immigration or citizenship law. This person could be wrong, could have missed something. On the other hand I sure hope this person does check it out before doing something irrevocable. Because it turns out that, well, it's complicated. So complicated that I read a bunch of articles that seemed to say conflicting things and so I threw up my hands and went to look at the law and at government websites. What follows here is what I was able to determine from those sources, which I tried to verify in the décret n° 93-1362 du 30 décembre 1993, (the updated version as of 29 septembre 2017). I nearly went blind reading so if there are any errors or nuances I missed, please let me know.

Voluntarily Losing French Nationality: There are different ways to do this depending on the situation: Repudiation is available to French citizens with a non-French parent upon reaching their majority or following the naturalization of a French citizen who has married a citizen of another country and that country does not accept dual nationality. Or it can be done through a declaration following the acquisition of another nationality. The Declaration is a limited time offer - 1 year to apply after acquiring another citizenship. After the year is up one can still ask to be Liberated from the Ties of Allegiance to France under certain conditions.

Some of the conditions are pretty standard like having another nationality so the person won't be stateless. The would-be-renouncer must also prove that he or she is French and that may involve getting a certificat de nationalité française - something that takes time in my experience. He must also provide a certificate from the country of which he is a citizen with information about how and when it was acquired. And he must prove that he habitually and durably lives abroad (at least 10 years) and has no unmet obligations to the French state. The state also reserves the right to examine the motives that the citizen has for making the request. Tax avoidance, for example. If those conditions are not met and they are not satisfied that the motives are pure, the French government can refuse the request. If it is granted than a decree is issued and published in the paper version of the official government journal.

Reclaiming French Nationality: How she gets it back depends on how the French citizen gave it up. The process is called reintegration. Yes, it can be done but again there are conditions.

In the case of a French citizen who was Liberated from the Ties of Allegiance (decree) it's more complicated and there are more conditions. It can't be done through a declaration; it must be done via another decree. And, in essence, the I-want-to-be-a-citizen-again is treated as if he was an immigrant seeking naturalization. The state asks for proof of assimilation and adherence to the values of the Republic. Her life is examined in terms of morals and good conduct in addition to not having been caught doing something criminal like not paying taxes. And, finally, he must come back and live in France. Here again the state has the right to refuse the request.

So the French citizen I spoke to is, in principle, correct that it is possible to renounce French citizenship and then get it back. That said, it appears loss via declaration due to marriage or naturalization (if done within 1 year) would be much safer and easier than trying to get it back via decree. I can also see how a French citizen could theoretically do an end run around Japan's laws against dual nationality: become Japanese, renounce via declaration, apply for reintegration, move back to France as a French citizen, retain Japanese citizenship on the sly. However, getting that French citizenship back is not at all a sure thing and is contingent on things like how the former French citizen has lived his/her life abroad.

"A people shares a glorious heritage as well, regrets, and a common program to realize. Having suffered, rejoiced, and hoped together is worth more than common taxes or frontiers that conform to strategic ideas and is independent of racial or linguistic considerations. “Suffered together”, I said, for shared suffering unites more than does joy. In fact, periods of mourning are worth more to national memory than triumphs because they impose duties and require a common effort." (Translation by Ethan Rundell.)

If you've never read this text, I really encourage you to do so. It was a lecture Renan gave at the Sorbonne in the late 19th century in which he asked this deceptively simple question. At a time when people viewed race, ethnicity, language, national borders and even common interests as the elements that make up a nation, Renan argued rather that a nation has a "soul" that is composed of the past and the present: "One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the
other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the
heritage that we have jointly received."

That is a emotionally stirring and surprisingly inclusive definition. It's not something that one can prove empirically and the fact that he had to argue for it says that many at that time would have disagreed. Many still would. Is is possible to conceive of the French or Japanese nations today without the French and Japanese languages? And yet Renan argues against making it a defning feature of the nation for "When one exaggerates its importance, one limits
and closes oneself up in a particular culture understood as national. One leaves the open
air that one breathes in the midst of humanity in order to lock one’s self away in little
freemasonries of one’s compatriots."

However, where I definitely part ways with Renan is when I read these passages (the ones most often quoted):

"Forgetting, I would even say historical error, is an essential factor in the creation
of a nation and it is for this reason that the progress of historical studies often poses a
threat to nationality. Historical inquiry, in effect, throws light on the violent acts that
have taken place at the origin of every political formation, even those that have been the
most benevolent in their consequences." and "However, the essence of a nation is that all of its individual members have a great deal in
common and also that they have forgotten many things. No French citizen knows
whether he is a Burgund, an Alain, a Taifala, or a Visigoth. Every French citizen has
forgotten St. Bartholomew’s Day and the thirteenth-century massacres in the Midi."

Renan argued that forgetting was a good thing: A collective memory of the past is what makes it possible for members of the nation to envision a common future. This is an appeal to national unity which should, in his view, override historical accuracy.

This argument is still with us; you can hear it in the US, in Japan and in France. Some say Why do we have to keep talking about the history and legacy of slavery and colonialism? Let us all instead indulge in a collective act of selective amnesia and just move on. There are many answers to that suggestion written by far wiser people than I. But my belief is that this simply can not be asked of people whose recent ancestors suffered great injustices and who are still feeling the weight of the past in the present.

This proposition also offends my own honor: Am I so small a person (so delicate a flower) that I need lies or erasure of facts in order to think well (or badly) of my or any other nation? Nor would I like to think of myself as so lacking in intellectual integrity that I decide to accept one pleasing and palatable version of an historical narrative and sweep all others aside. "You can't handle the truth!" was an insult, not the wise words of a venerable warrior. The truth certainly can elicit all kinds of emotions but it is not for someone else to say whether you or I can "handle" it.

In the context over these thoughts about forgetting, I am following debates over the Confederate statues in the American South and the shrines to the war dead in Japan. I confess that I have never been to that part of the US but I have been to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. (And I went with full knowledge of the controversies surrounding it.) The arguments for and against them are not so far apart though the existence of the shrine is a recurring national debate and an international cause célèbre in Asia.

Are they memorials or monuments? Are they recalling events to which Renan might counsel forgetting in the name of national unity? Do they promote an historical narrative that is one-sided and based on principles like imperialism and white supremacy? What does it mean when a Japanese prime minister pays a visit (or for that matter, Jean-Marie Le Pen) or when American politicians argue against the removal of statues? Do we accept that "Yasukuni Shrine was established to commemorate and honor the achievement of those who dedicated their precious lives for their country" and Confederate statues and flags as simply a part of the "heritage" of the region?* Or do we reject those arguments and ascribe far more nefarious motives to those who built them, visit them, or support their continued public existence?
National tragedies are not so forgettable as Renan seems to suggests, nor is it obvious that a people necessarily see themselves as united in suffering. Akiko Hashimoto had this to say about the nation and the past in The Long Defeat: "Memories of difficult experiences like war and defeat endure for many reasons: the nation's trajectory may change profoundly as it did when Japan surrendered sovereignty in 1945; collective life must be regenerated from a catastrophic national fall; and losers face the predicament of living with a discredited, tainted past." May I suggest that if people perceive that those are the stakes, then efforts to explore the past together in order to come to a place where there is that desire to move on together will be a Sisyphean task. Because anything that smacks of Sin without the possibility of compassion and redemption leaves people with nowhere to go but Hell (in which case they will fight like devils just to get into Purgatory.)

I think these debates are necessary, however acrimonious and painful they may be. It may very well be that what we are experiencing now in so many places - the angry debates, the culture and identity wars and the never-ending arguments over "the moral character of heroes, victims and perpetrators" (Hashimoto)- is a form of Renan's "suffering together." Like all things under the sun, it will be over one day and how it will end, I cannot say. But I do think that Renan is right and national unity (and better international comity) may actually come to pass once we have learned to sincerely regret and to grieve with and for each other.

*This connection has been made before by others. Just google Yasukuni and Confederate Flag.

Monday, September 25, 2017

We hear a lot these days about a big beautiful Wall that is going to be built on the US southern border.
I'll believe that when I see it. And so far I'm seeing nothing which means that sometimes a government's inability to get things done is a very good thing. As you can tell I am not a fan of the idea. I think it's useless and expensive and as a US taxpayer I'm not willing to shell out money just to make homeland Americans feel like they have their very own brick and mortar doudou to help them sleep better at night.

The other day it occurred to me that there is a very good reason that stricter border enforcement is all the rage (and not just in the US): it requires very little inconvenience, effort or sacrifice on the part of resident citizens (also known as "voters"). Their lives need not be disturbed in any way, and it might even generate a few jobs. What's not to like about that?

Contrast enhanced border security with other forms of immigration enforcement that might be a better bet like worksite enforcement, so unloved and regularly ignored by millions of Americans. Because, you see, worksite enforcement applies to them as well as the undocumented workers.

Yes ma'am/sir, It is illegal in the US to hire an undocumented worker. That means that a citizen who hires someone who does not have the right to work in the US is breaking the law. Funny how so much of the focus is on illegal entry by migrants ("They broke the law!") while Americans seem to be rather sanguine about the lawbreaking by their fellow citizens. Silly me, I didn't realize citizenship meant getting away with only obeying the laws you take seriously.

On the other hand they have reason to be only moderately concerned. The penalties for breaking hiring an undocumented worker are relatively modest. According to this site, it's about 250 USD for a first offense which goes up to 2000 USD for the second offense. (To give you a basis for comparison, in France the fine is 15,000 Euros and 5 years in prison.) Sometimes employers get caught (IFCO) but more often they don't. Some of that has to do with the fact that ICE just doesn't have the staff .According to Jerry Kammer (What Happened to Workplace Enforcement?) ICE conducted 2,196 workplace audits in 2010 and 3,127 in 2013. This, say Kammer, "represent a tiny fraction of 1% of the nation's employers" (loc 1510).

But one could argue that it's the employee verification process that is fatally flawed. (E-Verify is supposed to be better but it's not implemented in all states.) How can a US employer tell an undocumented worker from someone who is authorized to work? That's a conundrum; it's not as if you can look into someone's eyes and ascertain their citizenship or immigration status. So US employers are not supposed to guess or assume anything (though clearly there is discrimination based on things like accent or skin color.).

So, with very few exceptions, all employees in the US are required to fill out section one of the I-9 form (employers fill out section two) and provide proof of identity and authorization to work.

"While citizens and noncitizen nationals of the United States are automatically eligible for employment, they too must present the required documents and complete a Form I-9. U.S. citizens include persons born in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. U.S. noncitizen nationals are persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States, which include those born in American Samoa, including Swains Island."

Have a look at the list of acceptable documents here. Quite the list, isn't it? I certainly didn't know that a "Passport from the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) or the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) with Form I-94 or Form I-94A indicating nonimmigrant admission under the Compact of Free Association Between the United States and the FSM or RMI" is an authorization to work in the US. And for the life of me I couldn't tell the difference between a Green Card and a well done fake one. And that's OK because it appears that the system works on a "best effort" basis.

"You must physically examine the document(s), and if they reasonably appear on their face to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting them, you must accept them. To do otherwise could be an unfair immigration-related employment practice. If the document(s) do not reasonably appear on their face to be genuine or to relate to the person presenting them, you must not accept them."

Americans are not fond of this system. Business owners hate it (and try to get around it.) US citizen employees submit to it because they must, and grumble about the "damn government" and its prying ways. Attempts to make it more efficient and effective are, as Kammer notes, resisted by Left and Right alike. Yes, my fellow Americans, here is something some of the Left and Right actually seem to agree on. A proposal in 1994 for pilot employee verification programs designed to be more efficient than the I-9 process was seen by the ACLU as "'merely a launching pad for a national computer registry and a de facto ID card that will make human guinea pigs of...millions of people.'" The National Rifle Association (NRA) agreed as did the Cato Institute, the National Council of La Raza, and Grover Norquist (loc 542).

A new system that is in place but is not mandatory for all US states, is called E-Verify. This MPI report says that in 2011 only 1 business out of 25 in the US was registered in the system. Breitbart thinks it's a fine idea but the Cato Institute is still publishing articles like this one against it. As for the ACLU it made this video and clearly they still think it's a bad idea.

So how exactly is immigration enforcement supposed to work inside the United States? It's not if it means that Americans have to personally sacrifice something to make it effective. Everyone agrees that "something must be done" about immigration, and that laws in principle should be enforced but they want solutions that don't affect them - solutions that conform to their desire to keep the government out of their lives as much as possible. They seem to expect that somehow the US government is supposed to be able to just tell who is a citizen and who isn't, who has papers and who doesn't. The fact that they can't is apparently a sign of incompetence: they don't have superpowers and can't read minds.

So it is, I contend, a hell of a lot easier to sell better border security (that darn wall) than it is to suggest that if the goal is to identify citizens, legal residents and undocumented residents, this would be a lot simpler if, say, the US had national ID cards. If as Americans we don't care for that idea (and we are unwilling to obey our own laws) then perhaps we might want to rethink the need to make such distinctions in the first place and extend the right to be left alone to all residents.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

It is early Sunday morning in Osaka and we have planned a long bike ride along the Yodo River. Our path will take us past the Osaka Cathedral.

The history of Christianity in Japan is a fascinating one. This faith arrived in the 16th century and never really left though it went underground for a time only to come back in the 19th century. For a good overview of the history of Roman Catholicism, Orthodox and Protestantism in Japan I recommend Otis Cary's book A History of Christianity in Japan (kindle version available) which was first published in 1909. Cary (1851-1932) was a Protestant missionary in Kobe, Osaka, Okayama and Kyoto and many of his children were born in Japan.

His son was also a missionary in Japan and his grandson (also named Otis) grew up in Japan and was a professor at Doshisha university in Kyoto. That's three generations of Americans in Japan with a high level of cultural and linguistic fluency. Which, when you think about it, makes a great deal of sense. If the goal is to convert the people then first you must know them and speak their language - a case where integration has a purpose other than simply belonging?

The most interesting new knowledge I gleaned from Cary's books was a French connection. In 1855/56 French Roman Catholic missionaries (carried by French naval and merchant vessels) were waiting for an opportunity to enter Japan and were studying the language. One (M. Mermet) finally did arrive in Yedo in 1859 as a priest/interpreter for the foreign community, but he soon began construction of a chapel and started preaching. Other French missionaries followed building churches and proselytizing. This led to a wave of persecutions against Japanese Christians which lasted until the edicts against Christianity were finally repealed in 1873. Mgr. Petitjean sent this message to theMissions Etrangères de Paris (which is still around by the way): "Edicts against Christians removed. Prisoners freed. Inform Rome, propagation of faith, holy infancy. Need immediately fifteen missionaries."

Today Christians of all stripes are a very tiny minority in Japan. Roman Catholics are said to number around half a million and the Church struggles with some of the same issues as Catholicism in other countries: an aging population and a very secular society. I do note, however, that Japan has had a surprising number of Christian Prime Ministers. I would be very curious to hear your thoughts on why that is.

Friday, September 22, 2017

After finishing Notes on a Foreign Country I returned to another book that I picked up recently: Dual Citizenship in Europe (2007) edited by Thomas Faist. This book is 10 years old which says to me that the citizenship laws cited must be checked against the current laws. Yes, a lot can happen in just one short decade.

German citizenship law changed in the year 2000 when a limited form of jus soli was introduced and Turks (and others) were allowed to naturalize under certain conditions. However, for the most part the German rules against dual citizenship remained for non-EU migrants. Renunciation of all other citizenships is required in most cases (as it is in Japan).

The renunciation requirement is not always enforceable. It's hardest to enforce when it's a birthright citizen who goes out into the world and naturalizes in another state since states don't generally inform other states about who naturalizes. It's not impossible to enforce, however. One method might be to ask during a consulate administrative procedure like passport renewal for the citizen abroad to produce her residency papers or visa for the state of residence. From my experience (and let me know if yours is different) consulates abroad don't do this which effectively makes dual citizenship "tolerated."

Enforcing a dual citizenship ban is easiest when it concerns a naturalized citizen. The receiving state can require proof of renunciation of the prior citizenship before granting citizenship (or making it contingent on the presentation of the necessary documents). Both Germany and Japan do ask for this as part of the naturalization process.

But that, it turns out, is not foolproof either and Turkey is an excellent example of the kind of counter move another state can make against another state's citizenship laws. One is the easy reacquisition of a former citizenship citizenship and the other is a special status conferred on those living outside the national territory who have ostensibly renounced which nonethless allows them to retain most of the rights of citizenship including the right to return and so on.According to this 2012 EUDO report, in 1981 Turkey changed its citizenship laws and permitted dual citizenship as long as the person who acquired another informed the Turkish government of the fact. It also allowed Turks to be "released" from Turkish citizenship and then permitted them to have it reinstated once the naturalization process in the other country had been completed. Neat trick.

The Germans then turned around and changed their law to allow them to unmake a German citizen who had "illegally" taken on another citizenship after becoming German. And they did. At least the ones they were able to find. (And how they found them deserves its own post.)

In 1995 The Turkish government created a special status for its former citizens abroad.

"[T]the amendment created a privileged noncitizen
status. This status permits holders of a pink card to reside, to acquire property, to be
eligible for inheritance, to operate businesses and to work in Turkey like any citizen of
Turkey. Pink card holders were only denied the right to vote in local and national elections." (p. 6)

Another neat trick. One could argue that this is just citizenship under another name. Note that one had to be a birthright citizen of Turkey in order to have this status and it was "never intended to include the minorities who left
Turkey before 1981." This was primarily about Turks in Germany, not an open door for the acquisition of rights by other former residents and citizens. Fascinating.

In 2004 Turkey extended some of the rights of these non-resident-sort-of-citizens and they renamed the Pink Card the Blue Card.

In 2017 the Turkish Blue Card is still around. Have a look at this government website which says who is eligible and what rights and exemptions this status confers.

Question: Is this an acceptable compromise? Naturalized citizens can retain the right to return and reside in the home country but they can't vote and they are exempted from things like military service. Would this be a partial solution to the issue of citizenship-based taxation? For those of you who are naturalized, would you accept a status like this in your former country of citizenship? Would you have liked to have had that option?

Thursday, September 21, 2017

It is always deeply satisfying to find a book that I can add without hesitation to the Flophouse American Diaspora reading list. Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen is such a book. It is certainly one of the better takes on living abroad that I've read in the past few years. Not only did it satisfy my desire to better understand how American identity changes through emigration, it is a fair accounting of the innocence with which Americans at home (and sometimes abroad) view the home country's relationship to and place in the world. For make no mistake, Hansen believes in the decline of American power, prestige and influence in the world. She is "an American in a post-American world."

Before I tell you what I liked about the book I will start with a caveat emptor and some of the things I didn't like. This is not a book that attempts to be neutral or objective - in fact, Hansen suspects that objectivity is simply impossible. Notes on a Foreign Country is not an academic book but it isn't a typical expatriate biography, either. You won't find much in the way of citations and you won't learn a lot about what it's like to live in Turkey. Much of the book is about her discovery of the history of her own country in Turkey, Greece, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

If you studied Political Science or History she covers things that you probably already know. Read it anyway to see the process of discovery. In spite of an Ivy League education she seems to have been completely unaware of just how deeply intertwined the US was with those countries. She came from a conservative background in the US and one could say that with each migration she became less so. Sometimes the book feels like one is listening to a convert which can be rather tiresome.

There is also a complete absence of other Americans abroad. It is as if she is the only American in Istanbul which we all know is not the case. She did not solicit their views for the book which is a shame. It would have been interesting to hear from other resident Americans, especially those who had been in the country for twenty years, say, instead of ten. It is also sometimes irritating when she claims this or that characteristic for all Americans which may be true in her part of the US (East Coast) and in the socioeconomic circles she was raised in but is less applicable in others. Sometimes she qualifies this by reference to race: "White Americans."

I don't know quite how to describe her politics but I will say that there is much in the book that will anger American conservatives and a few things that will surely anger progressives. I certainly was not amused by her using "missionary" as one of the examples of "terrible" things Americans can be in the world. She is deeply critical but generally thoughtful and that was enough for me to have kept reading.

Migration: Hansen left the US in 2007 for Istanbul, Turkey on a writing fellowship and has lived there ever since . Like many Americans abroad she arrived abroad as a young adult after she had completed her university studies. The era in which she left the US is important, I think, to understanding her perspective. Growing up in what we might call these days "Trump country," she was a child during the Reagan era and still young when the Berlin Wall fell. Thus, the three national events that mark her consciousness are 911, the Afghanistan/Iraq wars and the Great Recession. The first was a direct attack on US soil, the second was military interventions that did not end well (did not, in fact, end at all) and the third an economic crisis that left many Americans impoverished. Her conclusion is that these things profoundly changed Americans.

"[T]he lives of American citizens, who have long been self-sufficient and individualistic - the masters of their own fates- have become entwined with the fate of their nation in a palpable way. It is also perhaps the first time Americans are confronting a powerlessness that the rest of the world has always felt, not only within their own borders but as pawns in a larger international game. Globalization, it turns out, has not meant the Americanization of the world; it has made Americans, in some ways, more like everyone else."

"More like everyone else." Yes, and Hansen, in some ways, is no exception. Intentionally or not, she joined the 200 million or so people on the move in the world. In fact she is a migrant twice over. First she migrated internally from a small regional town to the big city; from Wall, New Jersey (pop. 25,000) to New York (pop. 8 million) and then she finally landed in Istanbul (pop. 14 million.) She describes her hometown in the US this way:

"My town, populated almost entirely by the descendants of White Christian Europeans, had few connections to the outside world...I don't remember much talk of foreign affairs, or of other countries, rarely even of New York, which loomed like a terrifying shadow above us, the place Americans went either to be mugged or to think they were better than everyone else."

Every step of the way Hansen was drawn by opportunity: the chance to go to university and later a fellowship to go abroad and write. She stayed in Turkey for what sounds an awful lot like economic reasons: there was work in Istanbul and the economy was booming.

When my fellowship finished in 2009, the financial crisis whittled away any desire of mine to go home either in the short term -there were no jobs- or in the long term. The financial crisis made me stop looking at my future as I once had...[I]t was no longer clear that our lives would get exponentially better, as our country had always promised us.

Identity: What led Hansen to leave the US was more complicated, however, than economics. She believes that she was in the midst of an identity crisis which was not about sex or class or calling but about her nationality. What does it mean to be American in the 21st century? What is America's place in the world? Americans were always told that "they were the best, that America was the best, that their very birthright was progress and prosperity, and the envy and admiration of the world." Recent events seemed to contradict that; her emigration confirmed it. Her first glance at the airport in Istanbul in 2007 was where her sense of America as the "best" was wounded. The Istanbul airport was cleaner, more modern, and more efficient than "the decrepit airport in New York I had just left."

Returning to the US on two occasions she was able to look at the US with new eyes and to see and experience an America she had not known before. In the first she encountered the American health care system without insurance: "flies lived in the public hallway showers" and "that night in the hospital was one of the two times I viscerally understood how degraded America had become for many of its people." In the second she went to Mississippi to interview a doctor serving African-American low-income (or no-income) patients who had the audacity to suggest that America might want to look at Iran's rural health care program because something about the American system was not working. "Half of HIV-positive Mississippians didn't seek or receive treatment, because the vast majority of the people didn't have health insurance."

What does it mean to be the citizen of a country where one isn't sure that life will be better, where the infrastructure is crumbling, where schools do not teach about the wider world, where a hospital is dirty and unpleasant, where people with life-threatening illnesses cannot be treated because they have no money? There are countries like that all around the world, but Americans never thought their country was one of them.

Ignorance and Innocence: Hansen's argues that Americans' ignorance of the world and professed innocence about their country's presence outside the US are a terrible combination and has done enormous harm at home and abroad.

"We cannot go abroad as Americans in the twenty-first century and not realize that the main thing that has been terrorizing us for the last sixteen years is our own ignorance - our blindness and subsequent discovery of all the people on whom the empire-that-was-not-an-empire had been constructed without their attention and concern."

And I would add here that going abroad is not necessarily a cure. However well-travelled, however long Americans stay abroad, my experience has been that they know precious little about the history of the relationship between the US and the host country. Many seem to have no idea that as Americans they don't just walk into another world where all agree that the slate is clean, where they can completely reinvent themselves without reference to the past and the relationship between the US and that country. From that comes an arrogant expectation that they should be deemed personally innocent in any encounter where that country's citizens raise uncomfortable topics .

Americans were liberators and occupiers in France. They were conquerors and occupiers in Japan and after seeing a picture of Osaka in 1945, I will never look at the skyline of the city from my balcony in the same way ever again. It is very easy to say, "I wasn't born then and I had nothing to do with it." But it is worth thinking about whether or not many of the migrants I know (including myself) would be Americans abroad in France or Japan today if those things had not happened. Are we, in a sense, beneficiaries of someone else's tragedy? That, I think, is an excellent topic for discussion.

What is not, in my view, reasonable is to simply disavow any connection to these things at all. To say there is no empire and, in any case, it has nothing to do with me. What Hansen shows is that despite ignorance and self-proclaimed innocence, the people of the countries we enter know quite well what that history is and have their own feelings about the responsibility of Americans for their nation's actions past and present. Perhaps one element of local integration for Americans abroad is acknowledging those feelings and accepting that history in its entirety.

A book written by an American cannot end without a proposed solution. Hansen argues that one antidote is "love" and I scoffed at that until I read further:

"[i]t is not until one contemplates loving someone, caring about that person's physical and emotional well-being, wanting that person to thrive, wanting to protect that person, and most of all wanting to understand that person, that we can imagine what it would feel like if that person was hurt, if that person was hurt by others or, most important, if that person was hurt by you."

This is a call for Americans to learn to love the world and to stop viewing it as "a place where Americans go to get hurt and to hurt others." This, Hansen admits, was her starting point for thinking about big American cities and the world beyond America's borders.

The second is acknowledging that we are imperfect like the rest of humanity. ("Less than the gods and more than the beasts...") "We are benevolent and ordinary and we are terrible things, too; we are missionaries and oil speculators, racists and soldiers, bureaucrats and financiers, occupiers and invaders, hope mongers and hypocrites." And what would it cost us, really, to cast off the veil of innocence? In any case, as Hansen points out, local citizens who know their history don't believe it of us anyway. And, in my view, it makes us even more untrustworthy.

Hansen ends by conceding that she doesn't know what Americans and American identity will become but this is what she aspires to:

"Whoever Americans become after this time of reckoning, it will, hopefully, not be about breaking from the past but about breaking from the habit of its disavowal. If this project of remembrance requires leaving our country, then so be it, because it is not an escape; we will find our country everywhere, among the city streets and town squares and empty fields of the world, where we may discover that the possibility of redemption is not because of our God-given beneficence but proof of the world's unending generosity."

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

It was in Japan that I first encountered the term "bubble" in the context of migration. Foolish literal-minded me was a bit confused at first because "bubble" in my mind is 1. what small children create with soapy water and wands; 2. extravagant prices for tulips or stock; and 3. a way to keep a pleasant reality in and an unpleasant reality out. Using those definitions/images I could not immediately connect the term to migration. Clearly, it meant something else to the people who were using it here.

"Bubble" in the context of the English-speaking migrants in Japan is a metaphor for what is referred to elsewhere as a "[country of origin] ghetto" or, to be more politically correct, "[country of origin] community." Metaphor because people don't actually live in "[a] thin sphere of liquid enclosing air or another gas."

Why eschew the old and venerable term "ghetto?" Maybe because a strict definition of the term implies extreme poverty - something that I think it's fair to say most Americans, British and Canadians don't experience in the destination country. It may also be because "ghetto" implies spatiality; it's a place that you can point to on a map and where the well-meaning native counsels the tourist to avoid. The ABC's (and continental Europeans) simply aren't numerous enough in most places in Japan to completely overwhelm a neighborhood and call it theirs, though they can shape its character.

At best they live in a part of town that caters to the "international community" or apartment complexes that are "foreigner-friendly" but even there they are rarely a majority. In 2008 there were 152 Americans per 100,000 residents in Tokyo which meant about 18,000 Americans in a city of 13 million people. In Osaka there is a neighborhood called "Little America" (Amerika-mura) which is 99% Japanese, other Asian and African youths.

"Ghetto" is also pejorative; it's a place where we imagine that people are trapped and can't easily leave but there is a certain ambiguity introduced when the people in that space are a culturally and linguistically homogenous community of migrants. There are arguments for and against their agency: choice versus forced segregation. I note that when such an area becomes an area of interest for the cultural tourist it is elevated to a "town" ("Koreatown" or "Chinatown.")

"Bubble" when used in the context of migration here is combined with a not very nice word for foreigner. Added together these two terms become "gaijin bubble." Unlike "[country of origin] ghetto" a "gaijin bubble" is mostly disconnected from physical space and describes a combination of actions and intent on the part of a migrant in Japan and both concern integration. A migrant living in a "gaijin bubble" is one who has not integrated - much or most of their daily life is spent speaking their home country language and having very little contact with Japanese and Japanese life - and chooses to remain unintegrated. The notion of agency here is powerful - there is no ambiguity as with the word "ghetto." A "bubble" is a choice and with a little or a lot of effort (I've heard both) a migrant/expatriate can step out and be an active integrated member of Japanese society.

Is the term more descriptive or prescriptive. I would make an argument for the latter. When I hear an Anglophone in Japan use the term " gaijin bubble" they aren't talking about themselves, they are referring to how other people live. They are making a moral judgment that says "my way of living in Japan is superior to yours." Put that way it doesn't sound like very attractive behavior - it smacks of a sort of puritanical policing (as does, I would admit, the accusation that some Americans in France are living in an "American ghetto.") And, yet, I can see why they would do it.

The fact that such terms as "ghetto" and bubble" exist as epithets says to me that those migrants who consider themselves integrated are paying attention to those who they perceive as unintegrated. They claim to be on the outside looking in and yet (unless they have no direct experience with such people) they do have connections to them - some window into their lives which leads them to believe that they know and can judge them. However, outside of one's immediate circle of colleagues and friends the Japanese are likely to make no distinction between those who have integrated and those who haven't. Those who are integrated find this to be extremely frustrating and I can understand that. There is an argument to be made here that the behavior of those who don't integrate does affect the lives of those who do.

How can one change this situation? Well, asking the Japanese to approach migrants/expatriates differently would be one possibility, but is it realistic? Given the numbers, probably not. Asking 100,000 people to be more open to the possibility that some gaijins are fluent in Japanese so as not to hurt the feelings of the 152 foreigners is unlikely to work. As minority migrants and citizens they just don't have that kind of power or influence, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.

Another possibility which is easier and may seem more likely to produce results is to go to work on those who persist in living their "gaijin bubble" lives. Alas, this usually means: insinuating that their manner of living in Japan is all wrong; criticizing them for not speaking Japanese well enough or being illiterate; whispering, "he/she is still teaching after 10 years in the country" and so on. There are several reasons why this doesn't work.

First of all there is the lack of a clear and common definition of integration. The Japanese themselves don't seem to have an integration policy with regard to this population. (Perhaps it would be easier if they did.) So it's a very subjective thing. Since most migrants are on some sort of integration continuum just about anyone can point to some things they do which would make "bubble" or "ghetto" inapplicable to them. So when they hear those words they assume that the article or comment is referring to other people.
Another difficulty is that, frankly, there are migrant/expatriates who are not integrated and refuse to do so and those who are integrated have no real leverage to convince them otherwise. They don't care one whit about the good opinion of the integrated foreigners and are inclined to say that it's none of their business how they choose to live in Japan.

Last possibility I see is to simply let it go. In the schemes of things this is hardly the most important issue of the day. As they say, keep your own side of the street clean, live in accordance with your principles, negotiate your own integration in your community, and don't worry too much about what other people do.

That's how I see it. Feel free to disagree in the comments section. I will end this post by making three suggestions to those who can't/won't let this one slide.

The first is that with all this angst about whether or not a migrant/expatriate is integrated (enough) perhaps it might be worth asking the Japanese what their definition is and requesting some sort of official policy. Here is what we expect and if you do these things you are integrated to our satisfaction. At that point I think we could safely say that the debate amongst the migrants/expats would be over.

The second is that who feel they are integrated and are frustrated by those who aren't might want to consider moving the discussion away from talk of "bubbles" and superior versus inferior integration and toward a discourse that sounds like this: "Look, folks, things would be much better for all of us if, say, we all spoke, wrote, and read Japanese more fluently." Make a case. Make it here if you like.

And thirdly, complaining incessantly about and slapping labels on other people is like moving air - it accomplishes nothing. Or if it accomplishes anything it is the accumulation of resentment and the sparking of contentious debates. I'd take another look as well at the "choice" because, yes, there are those who refuse to integrate but I suspect there are many more who want to and are struggling. Personally, I would have much more respect for the position of those who talk of "gaijin bubbles" if they were actually doing something concrete to help people get out of them. My .02.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

"A peculiarly disenfranchised population that clearly illustrates this functional statelessnessand its dire consequences is the subset of child migrants who lack their own government. I will call this population Arendt's children."Bhabha, J. "Arendt’s Children: Do Today’s Migrant Children Have a Right to Have Rights?" Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 31 no. 2, 2009, pp. 410-451. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/hrq.0.0072: Available online: http://www.corteidh.or.cr/tablas/r22419.pdf

Jacqueline Bhabha argues that we can expand the definition of "stateless" to include those who for all extents and purposes have no government to appeal to and no one to enforce their rights. Undocumented migrants, for example, have a citizenship but not the citizenship of the country they reside in and the home country is not generally in a position to protect them in the same way that they ostensibly protect citizens within the territory. Undocumented child migrants, Bhabha argues, are a particularly vulnerable subset of the "functionally stateless."

The DACA children in the US (those who entered as minors) are seeking a regularization of their status because, it could be argued, they are effectively stateless; they are not under the protection of their country of origin, and they are in a rights limbo in the US, their country of residence. There is no question that they suffer severely in the US because of this. As chldren they did not choose to come to the US so they did not enter illegally of their own volition. Now that they are old enough to make their own decisions, they wish to stay. Most American are agreeable to this. In fact, only a very small minority of Americans support deporting them.

The US is not the only country coping with this issue. Nation-states are struggling come up with legal solutions to address what is an issue of ethics - how we treat and protect non-citizen undocumented children residing irregularly in the national territory? Japan deports them. France offers some protection when they are minors. The former is harsh, the latter is only (like DACA) a temporary solution leaving the children with an uncertain future.

Do these child migrants have a moral claim on the community in which they reside? The answer to this is, in my view, "Of course!" If a child is drowning, we don't say "Papers, please!" before we pull them out of the river.

But do undocumented children have rights? Ah, that is a much stickier question. Even citizen children don't have the same set of rights as adult citizens and most of us find that to be quite normal. But there is one right that citizens supposedly have from birth but is entirely at the discretion of their parents in childhood and that is "the right to remain." Most migrants/expatriates I know did not ask their minor children if they wished to remain in the home country (France, Japan or the US) - they simply announced the decision. A couple of interesting question would be: Does a child have the right to remain in the country of citizenship even if the parents want to migrate? If a child does migrate with his/her parents does she have the right to insist upon returning to the country of origin regardless of the parent's wishes? Something to think about....

I would agree with Bhabha and say that the DACA argument over child migrants comes down to "the right to have rights" and for me it centers around one specific right: the right to remain in the country of long-term residence, the only country in a position to actively protect/enforce that child's rights.

So far I am hearing two arguments against recognizing their moral claims and giving them the right to remain: The first says that this combination of recognition and rights creates an incentive for undocumented parents to bring in their children which will simply perpetuate the problem (or in the parlance of the anti-immigration crowd, "reward" them.) This is not not an entirely specious argument when you consider that children can be in real danger when they enter a foreign country. They can fall prey to child traffickers and other unscrupulous people. They can also fall into the hands of the immigration authorities who may detain even very young children. (See the case of Tabitha.) It is not wrong to want to limit situations where children can be endangered.

What this argument ignores is the most important incentive which they cannot legislate out of existence: the desire of parents to have their children with them and vice versa. (And I should not be having to explain the importance of family to my fellow social conservatives but, hey, that's where we are.)

The second argument I've heard sends a chill down my spine and that is "the prevention of chain migration." If the DACA children/young adults are legalized and put on a path to citizenship then eventually they can sponsor their relatives to come to the US. Well, yes, last time I looked US citizens do have the right to request "family reunification" and bring relatives and spouses to the US.
This means that every US citizen whether a citizen by birth or naturalized is a possible source of "chain migration." So, if preventing this is the goal, than are they suggesting that all US citizens should lose that right or have it be more limited than it already is? I think that's where they are going with this and for those of us with foreign spouses we need to pay attention because we could lose or see limited our family reunification rights.

Neither argument is convincing to me and I believe that there is a moral imperative to regularize the situation of the "functionally stateless" children in the US and elsewhere. Children without sufficient rights or even "the right to have rights" are in danger. It's the child drowning in the river, folks. As Bhabha argues: "[B]eing functionally stateless, whether by virtue of "alienage" or familial noncitizen status, also brings with it economic, social, and psychological dangers." Fundamentally, removing the danger means recognizing their right to have rights, putting them under the protection of the state in which they live which agrees to enforce those rights, and guaranteeing their right to remain.

Now the question becomes how to do that. Joseph Carens (The Ethics of Immigration) argues that just as we don't ask native born children whether or not they want to be citizens, we shouldn't ask the DACA children. They should simply be made citizens. I don't care for that idea. His argument is that we give citizenship to children when they born because we have an expectation that they will grow up in a particular political community (or with at least one parent who is a member.) His view of birthright citizenship reminds me a lot of baptism. In my church, babies and very young children are baptized without their consent because the expectation is that they will grow up in the Church and then, if they choose to, there is a validation of that baptism when they become adults. However, older children and adults have to give their explicit consent: they must "opt in." And all this seems quite reasonable to me.

The flaws I see in Carens argument are twofold: 1. I think all birthright citizens should explicitly consent to citizenship and there should be some kind of procedure/ritual for instantiating that consent when they become adults; and 2. I am uneasy at the idea that older children/young adults can be deprived of the right to make a decision about whether or not they want to be US citizens. Perhaps they wish to defer it. Perhaps they will chose never to become citizens. Regardless of the decision they make they should still retain the right to remain without any risk of deportation. And, yes, that means that that the right to stay should be unconditional and not contingent on their behavior. Their long-term residence since childhood should be sufficient to shield them from any possibility of being removed. A Green Card Plus is in order here.

Friday, September 8, 2017

DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an Obama-era,US immigration program that was designed to manage the issue of individuals who entered the US illegally as minors with their parents. They are still in the country but are not US citizens and they do not have a clear path to citizenship, nor do they have a legal right to remain in the US. Today, many are young adults going to school or working or volunteering.

And this makes for a very hard immigration case. The ugly question that homelanders are wrestling with is Should they be deported? Well, that feels downright inhumane and many (dare I say most?) Americans do not support ejecting them. These young people didn't do anything wrong and the US is the only country they know. They speak the language, know the culture, and they were educated in the US school system. In a sense they are already Americans. One could even argue that they have a better claim to being American than my children who do speak English but who didn't grow up in the US, who went to French public schools and who have had to learn US culture while on vacation. DACA was a step toward regularizing the status of these "Dreamers." It gave them some protection from deportation and allowed them to work and go to school. A look at the requirements for entry into the DACA program is instructive. Note that some of these young adults appear to be veterans."To qualify for DACA, unauthorized immigrants have to meet six criteria: (1) applicants had no lawful status as of June 15, 2012 (i.e., an unauthorized immigrant as of June 15, 2012); (2) applicants came to the United States before the age of 16; (3) applicants must have been under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012; (4) applicants must also have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007; (5) applicants must be currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a General Education Development (GED) certificate, or be an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States; (6) applicants cannot have been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors. In addition to these DACA qualification criteria, an individual must be 15 years or older to submit the DACA application." Pope, N. G. (2016). The effects of DACAmentation: the impact of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals on unauthorized immigrants. Journal of Public Economics, 143, p. 100. DACA was not, however, a long-term solution. As you may have seen from the headlines (if you read the English speaking media) the US president has shut down this program and tossed the whole mess to the US Congress. The debate has begun and it is ugly.I am shutting out the noise so I can think about this one and do some research. Let's start with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website. Thisreport has the number of DACA requests and denials over the past few years plus information by US state. Very interesting reading. The top four countries of origin for DACA beneficiaries are Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras but the entire list contains 24 countries (Poland is one) and a category called "unknown." In the states of residence in the US California and Texas are the top two by far and there is a category called "missing" in that list.Any thoughts?